Cosmos – Things Fall Apart
2021 · Multi-channel sound installation
Rooftop Terrace
permanent
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| 5 € / 2,50 € |
| No language skills required |
| Accessible for wheelchairs |
Wilhelm von Humboldt’s fascination with language, and its capacity to equate to a work of art, forms the starting point for this sound installation with choral singing of the Igbo folk song ‘Nne, Nne, Udu’ from Nigeria. Sung in the Igbo language, it is an allegorical tale about a maiden whose careless actions while carrying a valuable clay pot on her head resulted in it shattering into pieces. The song is accompanied by chants inspired by a line from Chinua Achebe’s famous novel ‘Things Fall Apart’: ‘He has put a knife on the things that held us together, and we have fallen apart’. The folk song and the chant originate from a rich Igbo tradition of oral storytelling, and are a critique of Christianity’s influence and disruption on the Igbo culture.
The music is performed at the strike of every full hour.
“The sound installation […] consists of two levels: on one level it is a new arrangement of a folk song for 12 singers; on the second level it is a spatial presentational form.
Sung in Igbo, the language of the eponymous ethnic group to which 35 million people in Nigeria belong, [it] creates a musical composition around the story of a girl who goes to the river to fetch water, but discovers on the way that her clay jar is broken. While this narration, rooted in the oral history of the continent of Africa, evokes a specific cultural sphere through its sound texture, rhythm and language, it is equally universal, since the form of singing in canon, based on polyphonic repetition, exists in many cultures worldwide, as does the everyday theme of the narrative.
Its presence as a soundscape on the roof of the Humboldt Forum is considered by the jury to be an artistically exciting and symbolically relevant setting. The work represents a glimpse from, and into, cultural forms and societies outside Europe, counteracting a eurocentric perspective on history and the world.”
BBR-WB Art in Architecture, Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, artwork location: Rooftop Terrace south west – extract from the written assessment of the prize committee, dated 19 May 2020.